Friday, January 23, 2015

I sat with my back to the one way
mirror in the interrogation room. Across from me were two of the
biggest criminals I had ever been face to face with. On the left, was
the one they all called Sarge. The one on my right had the nickname
“Jump Street” because he looked younger than his age and often
worked undercover.

These two would go on to rob hundreds
of accused drug dealers. Sarge rose in rank, enjoying the support of
crooked politicians and attorneys. Jump Street was wise enough to use
his resume to get out of town before their playhouse collapsed under
formal charges, disbandment, and restitution.I think Sarge mows lawns now, and answers phones for somebody.

But at this time they were young,
barely older than my twenty five years, and allowed to do as they
would. The town had once been known for the corruption of it's
police. Many from that era were retired, or soon to do so, and there
was a new generation of gangsters with badges aspiring to fill their
shoes. The hysteria of The War On Drugs was at it's pinnacle and
provided the perfect opportunity for bribes, “forfeitures”, and
outright theft. H.W. Was President and Dave had just been elected
mayor.

They had me sign a Miranda statement,
and were collecting my personal information. Sarge did most of the
talking. Jump Street left the room a few times and returned with
evidence bags, file folders, and the occasional supervisory agent.
One detective, I had known as an outlaw biker and had no idea he was
Drug Task Force. It turns out, he had investigated almost every
unsolved murder in the previous decade. Many of the victims (women)
had ties with law enforcement or politicians through either their
jobs or personal relationships. That's a different story though, and
for somebody else to tell.

We got to the part where Sarge asked me
if I had any aliases or nicknames. Seeing a chance to have some fun,
I answered in the affirmative. “Some people call me Redbeard” I
told him. “Any others?” he asked, “Sure”, I replied, and
really got into it. I told him how in elementary school, I wrote a
series of short stories wherein I had super powers and used the name
Barno and it had stuck among the boys I grew up with. Then I started
playing word games with my names as he listed them. I was born with
the name Todd Stuart Christian, so I gave him that one next.

Then I said Stuart Christian, Chris
Stuart, Chris Barnes, Stuart Barnes, etc. I went on like this for
awhile; enough that he had to turn the sheet over and keep writing. I
was able to keep up the charade halfway through a second page before
I began running out of ideas. I decided to give up the game. “Lefty”,
I said, and couldn't believe it when he wrote it down and didn't even
look up.

“Well”, I thought to myself, “might
as well see how far I could go with it”. “Bill the Sailor”. I
glanced over at Jump Street, who was taking notes as well. Neither of
them looked up, both had paused to wait for the next name. I imagined
them running all those names through some database and wondered what
they would find. I was amazed they were still buying it and had to
suppress the giggles.

“One Eyed Peter.”

Sarge wrote it, but Jump Street put his
pencil down and whispered to his partner. Sarge looked out the top of
his eyes at me and said, perfectly deadpan, “You're yanking my
chain aren't you”. Unable to contain it anymore, the laughter burst
out of me while they sat there looking at me stone faced.

Sarge asked me if I was on LSD “right
now”. “Oh god no”, I responded, “That would be awful”.
“Then why are you laughing and joking” he wanted to know, “Most
people aren't very happy where you are right now”. “I'm just
trying to make the best of a bad situation”, I told him honestly,
“You have your job to do and I have mine”.

I figure one day it will all bite me in
the ass. Some cop somewhere will run my numbers and all those bogus
aliases will show up along with a warrant for Bill the Sailor or ol'
One Eyed Peter and I'd better have a good alibi.

Sunday, January 11, 2015

I slept fourteen hours. The nearby
white noise of rushing water was not only relaxing, but served to
drown out any campground revelry. I probably would have slept even
more, but was awakened by a klaxon and rose to investigate.

I found myself in a mesquite grove at
the bottom of a mountain. There was a steep rock wall to the rear of
my tent, and a slow moving river about a hundred and fifty feet in
front of me. There were several camps set up along and in front of my
own. The alarm soon ceased and I found it wise to locate the shitter
we passed on the way in before investigating my whereabouts.

On the way there, I passed the
dog-catcher's truck. I thought it odd that there would be such
services this far into the wild. I waved and the woman driving
stopped to tell me she had come on the report of a vicious dog and
asked if I had seen one, I told her I had not. I later learned that
Goat's puppy had bitten somebody and they had gone to town and
reported it.

Wandering around, I noticed stuffed
animals hanging in the trees and lurking behind rocks. As I
continued, I began seeing eggs; both boiled and plastic. I hadn't
realized it was Easter.

I spotted some signs and verified that
I was at Childs campground on the Verde river. I had studied this
area at the library, hoping someday to visit. I hadn't planned on it,
as the road was too long and dry to hike (for my purposes anyway). I
worried how I would ever get out of here.

There was no vehicle at the camp across
from me, but a rafter had drifted in, and older guy, and he crossed
the path to introduce himself as Frank. He asked me if I had ever had
Apple Pie. I thought that odd. “Of course”, I replied. “No”
he said, “I mean APPLE PIE!”. I
conceded that perhaps I hadn't. He asked if I had a cup and,
producing one for him, he dashed back to his camp and poured me a few
fingers. “It's a local favorite”, he told me, and urged me to try
it. It was delicious. Cider and apple juice and cinnamon and spices.
“It's made with everclear”, he divulged, “Be careful”. And he
went on his way.

I sat
there, in front of my tent, enjoying my sweet, fruity breakfast. It
wasn't long before another gentleman came by with a prosthetic leg
and invited me to a pancake breakfast, to which he said the entire
camp was invited. I followed him to the shade of a Mulberry tree
where indeed, the entire camp had assembled. Ron started on the
flapjacks and his wife, Penny, busied herself giving haircuts to the
hippies. Barely sprouting stubble, I would wait a year to avail
myself of this kindness. I learned that it was Ron and Penny who had
hidden the toys and treats for the kids, and that it was an annual
endeavor for them.

Johnny,
the naked kid from the night before, was there in filthy jeans. Goat
was with him and dragging a gallon wine jug full of keg beer on a
leash. Goat handed me a sack of grass. “What's this”? I asked.
“You said you didn't have any” he said. “Enjoy”. Then he
tried to sell me some rocks. I traded some lapis I had worked for a
local crystal. That month, everybody I met got a piece of lapis or
malachite from me.

The
shy guy, in the hat with the fire-dick diagnosis was standing off to
the side (as he does) and motioned me to come over. He asked if I had
any pot and handed me a carrot.

The
strangeness and incongruity of this group of people and the words
they used seemed to have no end.

“Turn
it over” he told me. Turns out, the carrot was a pipe. “Rangers
don't think anything of a black old rubbery carrot in the bottom of
your pack”. He smiled and pulled a small drill bit from his pocket,
explaining that it was better to carry fruits and veggies and a drill
bit than a pipe around these parts. “There's a ranger here called
Frau Bluecher”, he warned me, “and she's a real ball buster.

Rusty
had a white Toyota van and a little dog that looked like a cross
between a Jack Russel and a Javelina and behaved likewise. He also
wore the most magnificent hat. He called it a Dorfman. While we
talked and smoked, a white truck had joined up with Frank. A woman
and a young man with coke bottle glasses and an enormous grin got
out. Not long after, a Sherrif's SUV showed up at their camp with a
Ranger behind.

All
the authority this morning was making me nervous. It appeared Rusty
felt the same and he suggested we walk. We went south as far as the
trail would allow. Rusty would occasionaly dash up a hill or reach
into the bushes and retrieve some piece of camping gear he had
previously stashed. He gave me a grill grate from up a wash. I still
have it, as well as the Dorfman, but the hat didn't come into my
possesion for another year.

On the
way back to camp, we saw the ranger, in fact Frau Bluecher, with a
clipboard writing down peoples license plates. Rusty said “Hey sis!
How are you doing”? “Fine”, she replied, “and you”? Rusty
gave her a sly look that I would learn often proceeded a sally of wit
and asked if she was German by descent. “Why yes”, she said. “Why
do you ask”?

Rusty
gave her that squinty eyed crosswise look and said “Because you're
acting like a fucking Nazi, that's why!”

I
walked the other way, pretending not to know him, and asked a few
different people how to get to the Hot Springs. I received as many
different directions as people I asked. I ended up following
footprints north, and actually found it. Turns out the klaxon I had
heard was the alert that the power plant to the north was going to
open the turbines. It was a warning to steer clear. The white noise
that gave me such restful sleep, was the turbines, churning out water
from Fossil Creek.

I
returned to camp about an hour before dusk. Ron and Penny had left,
and Rusty was at Frank's camp with Dee, Mikey, Goat, and Johnny.
There was a fire going and people kept blowing through their fingers
at the coals to stoke it up when it died down. This was curious to
me, as it was a mannerism I had never seen before.

Rusty
cut the fat from a pork loin and threw it on the grill grate. It was
a sheet about 18 inches square. Vultures circled overhead. We drank
Apple Pie and laughed at the vultures. When the fat was cooked,
Johnny and Goat fell upon it, gnashing it with their teeth, oils
dripping and running down their elbows. Sated, they moved on and
Rusty cooked the loin for the rest of us.

By the
time it was done, Dee was passed out in her truck and Mikey had
bloodied himself falling down while professing for the umpteenth time
that “I believe in US man, I believe IN US!”. The Apple Pie was
taking it's toll.

I
asked Rusty about the blowing through the fingers, because it seemed
so affected and I couldn't see how it was effectual. I'd noticed
people at different camps doing it.

“The
Anasazi's came down once, and taught us all that”, he said.
Everybody nodded in understanding.

Once
again, I was bewildered at the customs and language of these people.
I was under the impression that the Anasazi tribe had disappeared or
died out a thousand years ago. I stated as much, wondering if there
was a lost sect hiding out here.

It
turns out the Anasazi Rusty referred to were a group of troubled
youth who were sent out to a camp a few miles south to learn
responsibility through hardship and survival in the desert.
Apparently, they would sneak off in the night and party with the hot
springers. Since then, the project had been shut down.

Their
technique, silly as it may look, is a very effective way to coax fire
from coals.

To do
this, take your thumb and index finger and hold them together like
you would if holding a joint. Now do it with your other thumb and
forefinger. If you push the two together, you will see a diamond
shape about one quarter inch across. If you place this diamond to
your lips, it has the property of focusing your breath into a
concentrated stream. It works really well, and prevents the
hyperventilation sometimes experienced by normal blowing on coals. I
call it the Anasazi Bellows.

Saturday, January 10, 2015

I disembarked from the Greyhound behind
a motel in Camp Verde. The sun was behind the mountains and wouldn't
show itself until it rose on Easter Morning. I had to go all the way
to the other side of town on Hwy 260 and didn't want to be tramping
after dark in an unfamiliar municipality. What's more, with my two
oversized duffels, I had to hike ahead with one and return for the
other; suspicious behavior.

Lacking a government issued ID, I
couldn't get a room for the night. I could talk my way into lodging
at a mom and pop operation with any number of excuses. “My pocket
was picked on the bus” and “I had a fight with my wife and left
without my wallet. It's best I wait for her to cool off” are a
couple I had used successfully over the years. I particularly liked
the one about the pickpocket, because it made me look like a rube. I
played the yokel card often. People aren't so wary of hayseeds,
yokels, or rubes, and those conditions help cover possible
inconsistencies. I often looked to Woody Harrelson for inspiration.
His characters in “Cheers” and “White Men Can't Jump” were
largely above suspicion with their portrayal of corn fed Indiana
innocence; a role I had a face for and can play well. Unfortunately, these motels were
all national chains. I learned that if you are poor or on the road,
Corporate America could give a shit if they have your business or
not. I bet they wouldn't let Woody Harrelson himself stay there
without proper documents.

I found a Denny's, left my bags in the
foyer, and asked for a booth where I could watch them. I was
famished. I hadn't eaten since sun up. I ordered an omelet with
everything, well done hash browns, and a side of slaw. I love slaw.
Soon, I would have to subsist on hard rations. After my meal, I
ordered coffee and asked for the manager.

I told her that I was headed out to
hike the General Crook Trail and delays had brought me to town a
little late to begin. She gave me permission to review my maps and
journals over coffee in her establishment until morning, provided I
tip the servers generously.

It was raining when morning came. The
waitress who served me most of the night hooked me up with a ride to
the other side of town with the night cook. He dropped me off at a
combination Shell Station and Indian Tobacco joint called “Ernies”.

I left my bags on the sidewalk in front
of the store and went inside. I bought a can of tobacco, rolling
papers, lighters, a large cup of coffee, and a six pack of hostess
chocolate doughnuts. There were a couple of booths in the store, but
I went outside for my coffee and doughnuts so I could have a smoke.

I'm sure I looked bad. My head was
sunburnt and peeling and just starting to show stubble. It was my
third day on the road in these clothes. My lips were chapped and
cracked, and I hadn't slept since Chavez Park. The doughnuts were
gone and I was standing under the awning next to my bags with a
cigarette and coffee when Ernie showed up. He didn't like the looks of
me.

He told me to leave because he wasn't
going to have me bothering his customers. I told him that in spite of
appearances, I was no panhandler. I had patronized his establishment
and was just finishing my coffee and cigarette before I hit the
General Crook trail. He became irate. Actually, he was a giant
asshole and threatened me with the police if I didn't leave. Thinking
I would have been better off at a booth inside, I carried first one
bag and then the other to the edge of a bridge over the Verde River
where I would resume my journey. I was tired and angry and
distraught. I'd had enough of society for a while. It had been a
rough couple of days. All I had to do was make it a few more miles,
and I could set up camp and sleep.

That asshole Ernie (he didn't look like
an Indian to me), must have called the cops because it wasn't long
before a white car pulled up with U.S. Marshall emblazoned on it's
side.

I've mentioned before my thoughts on
the various branches of law enforcement. City and county cops didn't
worry me much, but feds are a little smarter, a little more educated,
and have a lot more resources. As Americans, we are subjected to the
scrutiny of local law almost constantly. It is a matter of course,
for both them and us, to interact in an official capacity. Because of
this familiarity, and their limited perspective, I had grown more
comfortable in explaining myself to them. Feds, on the other hand,
scared the crap out of me.

This G-Man exited his vehicle and asked
me where I was heading. I told him and he said as long as my ID
checked out, he would let me be on my way. I carried two photo ID's.
One was from a swap meet, and the other was from a check cashing
joint. Both were stamped in bold letters across the bottom “Data
Provided by Signatory”, which is legalese for “These Documents
are Bullshit”. I'd used both cards on deputies and city cops, but I
reckoned a fed would know better and might be curious. I told him I
had no papers.

He said “In that case, let's have a
look at what's in the bags”. I had those questionable cards in my
day pack, and a little grass in a pipe in one of the duffels. I chose
the third bag, which contained mostly groceries, and started emptying
it.

I'd gotten about halfway down into the
bag when a Mexican guy in a truck came around the corner and took out
a couple of the traffic cones that marked the beginning of the new
bridge. The fed pointed at me sternly and told me not to go anywhere.
Then he jumped into his ride and tore off after the pickup.

I shoved everything back in the bag as
soon as he was out of sight and stuck out my thumb at the next
passing van. It was a brown conversion van from the seventies or
eighties and had a back window shaped like a star. God bless 'em they
stopped for me. Noticing a girl in the passenger seat, I got in the
side door and offered my thanks as I stowed my gear and closed the
door. The trail to the rim and to Fossil Springs was nearly within
reach.

As if reading my mind, the girl I had
noticed asked me if I was going to the springs. When I answered in
the affirmative, she produced a cardboard hitch-hiker's sign that
read “The Springs”. I had lucked into a ride with people heading
right were I was. I thought.

We blew right by my trail head from the
260 and turned onto a dirt road. The driver offered me a Guiness and
the girl rolled a joint. I tried not to be nervous that we had passed
my turn. The rain was annoying, but not hard. The dirt road they had
turned on though, had become mud. We came to one wide bend where the
road was a thick red clay and we slid toward the edge of a ravine and
I might have yelled a little. Don, the driver, and Leslie, the
passenger, thought this was hilarious. I was terrified. I had another
beer.

After nearly thirty miles of this, we
came to a cattle guard with a sign that said “Nudity Prohibited”,
and they announced that we were home.

Just then a bearded homunculus and a
naked hippie kid leaped in front of the van, barring our way. They
told us there were rangers in camp and suggested we surrender any
drugs or alcohol or extra cash. We told them we would take our
chances and they walked along side as we eased our way down the
precipitous hill to the camp.

Don parked, and I removed my gear and
found a spot about thirty feet away to set up. It was pitch dark and
I sat a lit zippo on the low branch of a mesquite tree for the little
light it offered. The two would-be highwaymen came to my camp and
warned me not to have sex with Leslie. I was really in no danger of sleeping with Leslie. The blond, naked guy told me
she had raped his friend Goat (to which the homunculus nodded
emphatically). It was then that I noticed another guy, older than
myself, lurking in the shadows. “She gave me the fire dick” he
said shyly. “Good to know” I responded, not knowing what else to
say.

I had no idea where I was. I crawled in
my tent and slept like a fugitive that had been pinballing on the
road for three days with no sleep.

Friday, January 9, 2015

I thought I had already written this
story, or parts of it, but I can't find it in the index. I need to be
more organized. If it's already posted, well, here it is again.
Probably a little different. I wanted to work in The Apache Bellows.
I just can't help but think it was already written. I get confused
sometimes, because I often work through the telling of these stories
orally, to a lot of different people, before I write them. This is
certainly a story I tell a lot, and cannot imagine I haven't written
it.

I'll lay a little back story out on
this version.

After Maya passed and I broke all those
bones, I spent a few weeks back in Phoenix, in a tin shed. When I was
just healed enough to ride a bicycle, I headed back out to The
Forest.

It was March, and brutally cold yet up
at my home at Bear Canyon, but a heatwave in the Valley of the Sun. I was going to have to find a place to
lay up until about May. I consulted the fourth floor at Burto-Barr
library. I searched the trail maps and topographs for a location the
easiest distance I could find from the Mogollon Rim that would
provide me with the climate and resources I would need.

Fossil Creek, below Strawberry, seemed
my best bet. I could get there via trails I had found that traverse
the Matazal Mountains I could always be within three miles of water.
Then, when the weather broke to the north, I would leave the Fossil
environs and follow The General Crook Trail up to familiar haunts in
the high country.

I'm glad now, that the plan didn't work
out that way or else I might still be waiting for somebody to find my
bleached bones out there in that vast underexplored Matazal
Wilderness. We'll get to that.

I acquired a mountain bike and
outfitted it with solid tubes. I built a trailer for the bike, and
loaded it with water and food and all my gear in two duffel bags and
a big rubbermaid container that resembles the tool box of a
contractor's truck. I also carried a few personal Items that I
wished not to take. I intended to leave my home at 75th
avenue and ride to Chandler Arizona and leave these few mementos and
family photos with my friend Sunshine.

I rode down 74th avenue to
Broadway and then took 67th avenue across the Salt River
and past a farm stand. As I turned onto Southern, my bike trailer
collapsed with no hope of repair. I found a piece of cardboard in the
ditch and made a sign. “Bike for Sale. Need Help. A truck full of
Mexican Landscapers stopped and sold me a four wheeled cart from Home
Depot for $50.00 and took the remains of my trailer with them. From
here, I had to steer with one hand while with the other I dragged the
heavy cart with my gear.

Progressing eastward on Southern, I
began to see how rough this would be. It would take me days at this
rate to reach Sunshine's place in Chandler. It was more than a hundred degrees. I was sweltering. I turned south on 59th
avenue. It being mostly desert I thought I would have to worry little
about traffic. I'd gone about a half mile, my arm failing me as a
trailer hitch, when I was overtaken and accosted by a stereotype.

I should say here, that I was taking up
about a third of the road with my unlikely caravan. I had chosen 59th
for it's lack of housing and hopefully traffic. No such luck.

The huge white Cadillac crept up on me
silently and laid on his horn. Then he sped up and with a screech of
tires, pulled around me and cut me off. A fat white man in his early
sixties emerged from the behemoth with the admonition that I knew not
who he was. He wore Bermuda shorts, penny loafers with corroded
nickle in them, and a Hawaiian shirt. He was right. I didn't know
him. My mind wound back through news footage of local authorities and
came up blank. His attitude bespoke Sheriff Joe Arpaio, but his face
was unfamiliar.

He wore mirrored shades and a Greg
Norman Shark hat. The hat failed to hide the fact that he was
balding, sweaty, and angry.I could see belly hair between the gap at the bottom of his too-short shirt.

He told me it was illegal for me to be
taking up the road like I was and that with a single phone call he
would call down upon me a fury of law enforcement the likes of which
I'd never dreamed. Then he continued to tell me the numerous
indignities and inconveniences I would be subjected to as well as repeating his assertion that I did not know who I was dealing with. He finished
his rant by asking me what I thought of it.

I told him I wasn't any happier with
the situation than he was. I unfolded the tale of the collapsed
trailer and the journey so far. I assured him that at the nearest pay
phone, I would make arrangements to ditch the trailer and that I
chose this road for it's lack of traffic, pointing out that he had
blocked the road completely now for several minutes and no traffic
had approached. He returned to his caddy, shouted that he'd see me in
jail, and sped off.

I wondered why an upstanding citizen like him, Greg Norman fan and all, would be in jail. It was probably about then that I
realized my newly shaved head was blistering from the sun.

I made Cesar Chavez Park at sundown,
and made myself a bed. I woke several times throughout the night with
police spotlights in my face, but none ever hassled me further. In
the morning, I set up my camp stove and proceeded to make oatmeal
when a squad car approached and two officers emerged. Apparently, it
was okay to sleep at the park, just not to cook there. They
recommended I adjourn to a nearby Circle K to prepare my morning meal
and I obliged, thankfully.

The Circle K at 35th avenue
and Baseline is frequented, in the early morning hours, by workmen in
search of coffee, water, ice, and gasoline. After breakfast, I sold
the Home Depot cart and Rubbermaid container to visiting contractors
for the fifty I had in the cart and twenty more. They left me with
some milk crates into which I sifted the contents of the container. I
called Sunshine to appraise her of my fortunes, and she came and
picked up those artifacts I relocated to the crates that she would store for me; saving a trip to
Chandler. She wept when she left, professing a certainty that I would
never return and it would be our last meeting.

There happened to be a bus stop on the
corner, and I loaded up the bike and mounted for the Greyhound
station. I had a new plan. I would bus to Camp Verde and then hike to
Fossil Springs where I could pick up the trail north. I got off the
bus a few blocks from the station, at a spot I knew would have the
most traffic. I worked the sidewalk there, until I sold the bicycle.

At the bus station, knowing I had more
than the seventy five pounds allotted at the time for luggage, I
hooked my toe under each bag in turn on the scale and lifted. My ruse
proved successful, as they charged me no extra. While I waited for my
bus, I was entertained by INS agents chasing a fella out and around
and through the terminal. It was like an episode of Scooby Doo when
they run in one door and out the other being chased by ghouls.

Eventually, I got my bus and was able
to relax a few. I had no idea how profoundly the next twenty four
hours would affect my life.

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About Me

I was arrested for possession of LSD in 1992 and threatened with a 42 year sentence. I split and spent the next fifteen years as a fugitive. The last five years I lived in the forests of Arizona. These are essays about some adventures I had during my journey to freedom .